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THE WRECK

visible, but sky and earth, the near and the distant, the seen and the unseen, were all blended in one swirling tumult which seemed to take shape as the fatted black buffalo of King Death, a hideous monster tossing its horned head aloft in fury.

Kamala could not define the emotion that stirred in her breast as she gazed upon the wild sky and the tur- moil of the night ; it may, have been fear and it may have been joy.

There was an untamed force, an untrammelled free- dom, in the raging of the elements that struck some dormant chord in her soul. The violence of Nature's revolt fascinated her. Against what was Nature rebelling? In the roaring of the tempest Kamala heard no answer to this question. The reply was inar- ticulate, like the storm in her own breast. Surely it was an effort to tear asunder and cast aside some form- less impalpable web of deceit, illusion, and obscurity that shook the earth to its foundations to the accom- paniment of the agonised shrieking of the tempest.

It was "No, no!" simply a blank refusal that the whirlwind vociferated as it swept from the uttermost confines of trackless space across the blackness of the night. What, then, was it refusing? There could be no certain answer, but it was emphatically a "No, no, never; no, no, no!"

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